


Forever and a Day

by PrettyArbitrary



Series: Blood Oaths [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Blood, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, So much angst, Torture, Vampires, Violence, non-consensual sexy biting, non-sex noncon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 04:34:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7998799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/pseuds/PrettyArbitrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack groans and feels cold stone against his face.  Tries to remember why he’s lying down and aching like a horse kicked him in the back.  His mouth tastes of dirt: not the good, clean earth of green growing things, but rotten, fouled like graveyards and places gone too long without light or warmth.</p><p>He’s been doing this too long, if that strikes him as normal.</p><p>Another groan beside him, in a familiar voice, makes him open his eyes and try to push himself up.  His arms stay behind his back.  Well.  That explains a lot.</p><p>“Gabriel…?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forever and a Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vinterhjarta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vinterhjarta/gifts).



> Thanks to [vinterhjarta](http://vinterhjarta.tumblr.com/) for this one, both with her inspiring presence and some [rock-awesome](http://vinterhjarta.tumblr.com/post/149080372417/vinterhjarta-so-this-piece-is-for) [art (nsfw)](http://vinterhjarta.tumblr.com/post/149080375477/aaaand-the-follow-up-picture-more-vamp-reaper76).

Jack groans and feels cold stone against his face. Tries to remember why he’s lying down and aching like a horse kicked him in the back. His mouth tastes of dirt: not the good, clean earth of green growing things, but rotten, fouled like graveyards and places gone too long without light or warmth.

He’s been doing this too long, if that strikes him as normal.

Another groan beside him, in a familiar voice, makes him open his eyes and try to push himself up. His arms stay behind his back. Well. That explains a lot.

“Gabriel…?”

“Yeah. Shit.” Gabriel sounds as strained and sore as Jack feels. Struggling up to his knees without the use of his hands, Jack discovers that he’s chained to the floor with hands bound behind his back, with just enough play to let him kneel and rise no further. Gabriel is next to him, groggy and ungainly as he too struggles upright, chained the same way Jack is. They’ve been stripped of weapons; stripped of everything but their boots, trousers and undershirts.

The room they’re in is small and old, built of rough-hewn stone worn smooth with age. It smells like a graveyard. The dim light comes from torches—not gaslight but actual pitch-soaked wooden flambeaus. As bad as things look for them, Jack can’t resist curling his lip at the theatricality.

He spots the man watching them when he moves. He’s silhouetted against the light of the barred doorway, although Jack would swear by his mother’s name he wasn’t there a second ago.

Attuned to one another as always, Gabriel catches Jack’s flinch and tenses as he follows his attention to the cause. It isn’t really a man, of course. They were hunting a vampire, but it seems to have found them first.

“Where the fuck did you come from?” Gabriel growls, more offended than afraid. He’s not asking where it came from just now. Vampires are dangerous prey, intelligent as any human and often moreso, with lifetimes of experience to draw on. But as hunters go, Gabriel and Jack are as good as they come. Every hunter fails eventually, and it usually means their deaths, but it burns that they hadn’t seen this trap coming.

A wife, a servant, a child--someone betrayed them. Vampires can mark their prey, taint them with their blood and make servants out of them. They’d been so careful, tested everyone they dealt with, but obviously they missed somebody. Jack hunches over his knees and sighs through his nose. Whoever it was will be screaming inside their own head now, helpless to stop themselves from turning on their one chance of salvation.

As for the two of them, it’s no show of mercy that the vampire’s kept them alive for. Jack tilts his head to meet Gabe’s eyes, soft with knowledge and grief. They’re going to watch each other die.

The vampire steps forward and the light catches him. They’ve spent months stalking this one, raining hell on all his works in an attempt to draw him out, but this is the first time they’ve seen him in human form. He’s dark of hair and eyes, with skin paler than Jack’s. Powerfully built, but that hardly matters. He could be built like a twig and he’d still be able to throw a horse. He smiles at them, fangs long and menacing, arrogant poise all but rippling in the air around him. “The infamous Reyes and Morrison. You have been a menace to me.”

“Damn right,” Gabriel answers, baring his teeth in return.

The vampire’s face twists. Another step and he’s in front of them. He catches Jack by the hair, forces his head up. Gabriel’s snarl clearly pleases him. “Yes, it warms your hearts to hear that, I’m sure. You can consider it a parting gift, then. It’s long past time that someone ends your meddling.”

Jack tosses his head, trying to shake off the touch that drifts exploringly down the contours of his face and throat. The vampire simply tightens his grip till it threatens to rip Jack’s hair out. At the collar of Jack’s shirt, he grabs and wrenches. The rending cloth jerks Jack’s body as it tears off him.

Gabriel sucks in a breath. Jack’s jaw tightens; they’re both beginning to suspect where this was going. Vampires are sadists. It runs in the blood. They’re at his mercy and he has no reason not to take his time.

“I’ve killed many hunters,” the vampire murmurs, leaning down over him. “But none of them have annoyed me quite so much as you two. For what you petty little mortals have cost me, I think you deserve something more than death.”

Panic bubbles up. Jack jerks at his bonds uselessly, trying to thrash out of the iron grip the vampire holds him in. Next to him, Gabriel’s chains ring and clatter in harmony, his rough voice hurling profanities. There are worse last things, Jack thinks as those fangs stoop down toward his neck, than the sound of Gabriel’s voice.

“Hey, fuckwit,” Gabriel snarls.

The vampire pauses. He’s so close that Jack can feel him tense in surprise.

“Get your shitty hands off my partner, you gaudy tick. And stop talking like you’re anything more than a jumped-up grubby parasite. You’re not a conqueror. You’re a leech in grandparent clothing.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Jack hisses. Dread ties knots in his guts as he realizes what Gabe is trying to do.

The vampire straightens and releases Jack with a laugh. “I know what you’re doing. You think it will change anything for either of you if I turn you instead of your lover?” The pallid lip curls and he turns to grab Gabriel’s jaw, gripping hard enough to blanch his dark skin. “Oh yes, I can smell you on him. Do you think perhaps your _love_ will protect him?”

“Gabriel!” Jack throws himself against his chains, ignoring the wrench in his wrists and shoulders. “Let him go, goddammit!”

Gabriel just stares up at the bastard with his teeth bared, such hostile challenge on his face that he doesn’t need to say anything.

It’s an expression that’s never failed to intimidate or piss off anyone Gabriel turned it on. It doesn’t fail now. The vampire hisses in fury—an inhuman sound, like a pot boiling over—and then pushes his mouth against Gabriel’s ear, speaking just loud enough for them both to hear. “Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to turn you. And then I’m going to leave you to each other.”

Gabriel roars and heaves, but the vampire ignores him like a fitful child. He pulls Gabriel’s head back till his throat is taut and then bites down. Blood spills instantly. The vampire doesn’t even bother drinking most of it, just lets Gabriel’s blood pour and spread along the joints between the stones. Jack can hear his own voice ringing off the walls, but he doesn’t know what he’s saying. Gabriel’s beautiful face twists in anguish, and then a moment later, horribly, in pleasure. His whole body quivers in a way that makes Jack sob. The vampire forces him back till he’s on the floor. After that, Gabriel can’t stop the moans.

It takes a long time. After Jack has exhausted himself battering against his chains, ripped his voice threadbare, all he can do is lie there and watch, on the floor next to the man he loves only a few unreachable feet away.

Gabriel meets his eyes for a while, till they slip closed. He mouths something, words meant only for Jack, before his body goes slack under the vampire.

Jack keeps watching, even when his sight blurs to uselessness and his own breaths tear at his throat like claws.

But when the vampire slits his own wrist and parts Gabriel’s lips to pour the blood into his mouth, Jack turns his face into the bloodied stone floor.

Jack’s arms and shoulders burn with every breath as though he tried to rip them off his body. Blood tickles his fingers as it drips. His nerves are a red hot wire strung inside his arms, searing and freezing. It's a bad sign. He doesn’t care.

Gabriel lies on his back a few feet away, lifeless and still. Jack knows what a dead man looks like, and he’s looking at one now.

But he won’t stay that way.

After one rising and setting of the sun, Gabriel will wake. His eyes will be red and lit with a hellish light. He’ll be frenzied with hunger. His strength and speed will be supernatural, but newly changed and confused by his own body and senses, he’ll be as vulnerable as he’ll ever be again.

If it’s possible to catch a vampire in that state, it’s the best time to kill them. Before they can learn to use their power. Before they can escape into the world to do damage. Before the demonic taint in the blood turns them entirely from the person you loved with every fiber of your being into something monstrous.

It’s what Gabriel would want.

The vampire did something to their chains before he left. Eventually Jack tests them and finds they come loose easily this time. He isn’t surprised. Their captor wants to watch them kill each other. There’s not much in the way of potential weaponry in the room, but there are the torches, heavy flaming wooden staves thick with pitch. A perfect tool against a vampire, in the right hands. And Jack has been killing vampires with great proficiency for a long time.

He crawls over on bones that feel ground to sand to rest his head on Gabriel’s horribly still shoulder and wait.

In the intervening hours, he daydreams. Remembers. Gabriel’s sleeping breaths next to him. Gabriel’s laugh. The grumpy crinkle of his eyes when he spilled beer into his beard and Jack laughed at him. The strong sinuous line of his back on a horse, and the strength of his hand on a crossbow’s stock. The savage joy of Gabriel at his back in a fight, strong and immovable. The sweetness of Gabriel’s body bare and warm against his own. All the scars they’ve earned together, and the marks they’ve given each other. The way just a day ago, they lay wrapped in blankets and each other in a hayloft with their breath making clouds in the dawn air, planning their ambush between slow kisses and touches.

He’d think of it as saying goodbye, if he could do that. He can’t. Half his soul has been ripped away. When he kills Gabriel, he’ll be killing them both. It’s a relief to think of it that way, to be honest; better than thinking of how he’ll be left behind to keep living and breathing alone.

He knows it’s nearly time when the vampire comes back. He doesn’t come into their cell this time, just leans against the wall of the hallway so that he can watch what they’ll do to each other.

Jack considers saying something to him. Vowing his death maybe. But he’s empty of words. If he survives this, that vampire will die, no matter what it takes. Let him learn that truth at the moment of his excruciating end.

This close, he easily spots the first flutter of Gabriel’s eyelashes. It’s time, then. Getting up is excruciating. His beaten body howls at every movement, and he has to literally rip himself away where Gabe’s drying blood glued Jack’s cheek and hair to his chest. He takes a couple of unsteady steps back as Gabriel opens his eyes and sits up, torchlight gleaming black across the dried gore on his chest.

His eyes. Blood red and glowing with a hellish light.

Gabriel sniffs the air, catches the scent of Jack’s blood, and pauses. “...Jack?”

Jack’s heart breaks. He feels it go. “Gabriel?” It isn’t really him anymore, or won’t be for long. He knows it, but it’s a knife in his chest anyway.

“You’re...bleeding. I.” A shudder wracks him. “I’m so hungry.”

He lunges so fast that he’s a blur. The chains holding him shriek as they break, but they catch at him enough to break his momentum. It gives Jack the time he needs to get the torch down and deflect him. Even so, Gabriel’s blow is strong enough to slam his shoulders against the wall. His body tries to seize up from the pain; he wills himself not to buckle to the floor. The vampire’s low laugh carries from the doorway.

“Gabe, goddammit!” His shoulders scream as he whirls the torch around him like a staff, weaving a wall of flame that makes Gabriel flinch back with a wordless shout. “It’s _me._ ” Stupid thing to say. Hollow. But Gabriel is still in there, still fighting, and Jack aches to reach him, to touch him for just one more moment before the end.

“You smell so good,” Gabriel whispers like it’s being forced out of him. “I want. Jack. I need.” He takes a step forward and then a step back, panting as if he’s just run a race. “I need you to do it now. Before I can’t stop.”

That’s when Jack knows he can’t.

It’s a lurching, staggering realization. Not all of him catches up to it at the same time. He snaps the shaft of the torch across his knee, giving him a shorter stake with something like a point on one end. He flips it in his hand to hold it jagged end out and steps toward Gabriel...and then his body simply stops.

He meets Gabriel’s eyes, sees horror dawning in the hellfire. “ _Jack._ ” He’s begging. He’s _begging._

And Jack can’t move. Of course he can’t. If he’d been able to kill Gabriel, he would have done it in the hours they lay together in Gabriel’s drying blood. He would have done it in the moments between Gabriel’s first waking twitches and his rising. He draws in a shuddering, sobbing breath, and gives in to the ache in his hands. The pieces of the torch clatter to the floor.

He’s failed. He’s failed in the most important task he will ever face.

“God damn you,” Gabriel whispers. His deep voice shakes with venomous sincerity.

“I suppose he will,” Jack whispers back. Words burn in his ruined throat. He doesn’t even have the right to say them, but he has to. “I’m sorry.”

“Not yet,” Gabriel breathes. “Not yet, _cariño._ But you will be.” Gabriel has tugged Jack into his arms so many times, but this time his hands grip ruthlessly hard, pull at him with whiplash ferocity. From inches away, Jack watches the last light of the good man die in Gabriel’s eyes, choked out by rage and betrayal. Killed by Jack after all.

Gabriel’s kiss is brutal. Jack doesn’t resist, opening his mouth and not flinching as those fangs cut at the insides of his lips till he tastes blood. Gabriel licks it out of his mouth with a swipe of his tongue. His moan of pleasure reverberates through Jack’s body and then Gabriel surges against him, drinking from his mouth, shuddering. Jack discovers he’s crying when Gabriel releases his mouth to lick at his tears. Jack closes his eyes and lets him have all he likes.

Fingers lace into his hair and then tighten, pulling his head back till he’s all but immobilized. Jack shivers, remembering his hell from just a few hours ago—the hell he’s still in, the hell he’s trapped them both in—but there’s nothing left in him to fight with.

“God damn you,” Gabriel murmurs again against the pulse point of his throat, and then he bites down. 

Jack arches against him with a strangled cry.

Hunters are taught to avoid the vampire’s bite at all costs. It’s the most insidious of all traps: once a man is caught in it, he no longer wants to escape.

“Gabriel,” Jack groans despairingly, because Jack has never wanted to escape him. 

But first the bite stabs him, tears his throat open, and chokes him with the horror of being made into prey. He welcomes it. It blends seamlessly with the black agony of regret in his chest. He wants to apologize again, to keep repeating it until the sheer force of it brands into the air and erases all this. He traps the words behind his teeth because they’re a mockery of everything they’ve become and all that’s happening. An attempt to deny his own fault in this. It’s almost a relief when Gabriel wraps a powerful hand around his neck and cuts off his air.

Gabriel uses the grip to force Jack to his knees. His teeth tug dangerously in Jack’s throat as they move together. It's an invasive, threatening pain that fizzes in Jack's bloodstream and then spills over, flooding him in intoxicating waves. He moans against Gabriel’s shoulder.

Gabriel straddles his lap, keeps pushing him back till Jack’s shoulders touch the floor, pinned with his back forced into an arch. Jack rolls his hips against him, unable to stay still with that aching, deadly pleasure surging through him. Gabriel pulls his teeth away to brush his lips against Jack’s ear, murmuring in a parody of his lover’s voice. “It feels good, doesn’t it, Jack? Does it ease your conscience, to know I’m not _suffering?_ ”

There’s nothing Jack can do but wrap his arms around Gabriel and pull him close. Gabriel bites him again, just beneath his collarbone where the swell of his chest begins. Jack rises up pleadingly against him, fingers skidding against the bare curves of Gabriel’s shoulders. 

Gabriel catches his wrists and pins them to the floor. “Beg me, Jack. Beg me for more.”

Jack cries out and writhes for him. He wants more. Each lick and swallow rolls through his veins in a horrible, consuming pleasure. Even more than that, he wants Gabriel—every touch, every lying wave of bliss, every dwindling moment. He sucks down poison because it tastes like his lover and begs Gabriel for more, begs for Gabriel to stop. Gabriel laughs bitterly and carves retribution into Jack’s flesh with one ecstatic bite after another till crescent marks cover his shoulders, throat and chest, blood tickling along his skin like butterfly kisses.

He’s going to die. Gabriel is going to kill him this way and it’ll be no more than he deserves, but something in him splits open with rot at the thought of Gabriel left alone like this, with no one to help him.

Gabriel knows his mind, because he always knows. “You’re just the first, Jack. There will be so many others after you. How does it feel, to know you could have saved them? You could have stopped this.”

It feels like having his heart ripped out. Jack lies beneath his partner, panting and shaking. Everything's gone airy, fuzzy at the edges. How how much blood has Gabe taken? He shakes with the force of wanting him to take more. Jack squeezes his eyes shut, because if Gabriel let him up right now, he would stay right here. Where the fuck else would he ever want to be?

Above him, Gabriel exhales, deep and hard, his breath shaking with rage and… Jack opens his eyes a little to see Gabriel’s face is twisted with grief.

Jack pushes against Gabriel’s grip on his wrists, instinctively trying to reach for him. “Gabe. _Please._ ”

Gabriel doesn’t let him up. He stares down at Jack, a terrible hopelessness on his face, and gives a full body shudder. Then he lifts one hand to bite at his own palm. 

Jack’s eyes go wide. Horror spills over inside him. “No…” He hates himself for saying it, for refusing what Gabriel’s already had to suffer.

Gabriel hates him for it too. The venom in his laugh will haunt Jack’s nightmares. “You’ll watch, Jack,” he whispers. “You’ll watch what I become. What I do. If you won’t stop me then you’ll suffer with me.” He lowers his hand to seal his palm over Jack’s mouth. “Drink.”

He can’t refuse, and Gabriel knows it. He can’t leave Gabriel alone like this; can’t do that to him along with everything else. Jack squeezes his eyes shut, and then immediately opens them again. He can’t bring himself to look away. Holding Gabriel’s eyes, he parts his lips and lets the blood spill in. Lets Gabriel mark him as his own.

Gabriel’s face twists in agony. They’re both damned.

It hits his tongue and pours into his body, a poison that feels like the breath of life with each swallow. The air is crystalline. The scents are clouds that almost have their own color. He can feel the injuries knitting and fading from his body, but most of all he’s aware of Gabriel. He can feel him from the inside out. 

He could die happy like this, the two of them pouring into each other till there’s no separation left between them. How many times have they wished for this?

Laughter.

It’s ugly, arrogant. Not his. Or Gabe’s. He turns his head dreamily, follows Gabriel’s glowing eyes toward the torchlit corridor. The vampire. He’d forgotten about him.

Gabriel’s face darkens like a thundercloud. A part of Jack manages to nudge through his enthrallment to note that Gabriel’s face _actually_ darkens, a dark mist rising like living shadow around him. He pushes himself up from Jack and starts toward the doorway, violence in every line of him. He doesn’t even slow down for the bars; simply stalks right through them, spreading into a smoky smudge and solidifying again on the other side.

Jack rolls over and reaches for the improvised stake he dropped. His head is still cloudy with Gabriel’s influence, but like hell he’ll let Gabriel kill that motherfucker alone.

The vampire tries to run. Gabriel streaks after him and pounces like a wildcat. They roll around on the floor, hissing and snarling, till Jack sees his opening and takes it, driving the wooden shaft into the vampire’s heart from behind. A vicious thrust pierces the ribcage, and he takes his time driving it further in increments, a few inches at a time till it’s fully impaled the heart. Gabriel holds the vampire in an iron grip from beneath him, keeping him from escaping while he howls and thrashes.

When it’s done, Gabriel kicks the shriveling body off him. It crumbles into charcoal-like pieces as it strikes the wall.

Jack holds his hand down to help him up—Gabriel feels so light now, his blood boosting Jack’s strength beyond normal human limits—and they stand there together, looking down at the remains of their torturer. Their killer, Jack guesses.

After a bit, Gabriel turns around, and raises an eyebrow. The cell door is hanging crookedly, torn off its hinges.

“Huh,” says Jack. He can’t remember coming out of the room, but it was still intact when Gabe walked through it. “I suppose we’re both thoroughly fucked, then.”

Jack isn't a vampire, but he has a vampire's blood in him. Marked.

“Your eyes are glowing,” Gabriel tells him. Jack turns back to him questioningly. “It’s faint but you can see it in the dim light down here.”

His tone is cool, analytical. Jack's anger boils up, because he recognizes Gabriel’s ‘fuck you’ tone.

“You’ve done away with any possibility of me dealing with you,” he snaps.

“You were never going to be able to,” Gabriel growls back, low and vicious. “I saw your face. I _know_ that look.”

Jack spins around to face away from him and spits a curse at the wall, then swings back. “And tell me you would’ve done any fucking better if it was me! This asshole,” he kicks at the dust that used to be a vampire, “might have miscalculated, but he knew exactly how to punish us. Are you going to let him get away with it?”

“He didn’t.” Gabriel’s voice is cold as the stone around them. “You did this.”

Jack gapes at him, not sure whether what he’s feeling is hurt or fury.

“He turned me into a goddamn vampire, Jack! I’ve spent my life hunting monsters like this, and now look at me!” He lifts his arms wide. His voice drops to a poisonous hiss. “I’m still ravenous, Jack. The only reason I’m not killing you right now is because I marked you. But I _am_ going to kill, and I will do it well, and often, and unchecked, because I was a hunter and I know all the tricks and there is no one out there who is good enough to stop me. Except you. But you won’t, will you.”

Jack can’t meet his eyes, because no, he won’t.

“So tell me, will you, how this isn’t your fault?” His voice twists till it doesn’t sound human. “Tell me how every life I take isn’t on you just as much as me.”

Jack closes his eyes and inhales. The first swirls of anger begin to nudge aside the torrent of grief and self-hatred he’s been drowning in. It’s a goddamn relief, and he lets it come. “Those lives are on me,” he says slowly, “and I did fail you. And I’m sorry. I will be sorry for the rest of my life for that. But you’re the fucking asshole who took this on yourself.” He opens his eyes and glares at Gabriel. “It would have been me. But you couldn’t live with that, could you. You stand here calling me a coward when you’re the one who let yourself get turned into a goddamn abomination so that you wouldn’t have to be the one to make the choice.”

Hands balled into fists, Gabriel quivers so hard his outline blurs. He turns away from Jack, takes three paces, stops, shakes again.

Jack knows this routine. It’s his variation on counting to ten. He’ll turn and come back in a moment. But now that his blood is up, Jack is too angry to let him. “But you know what, Reyes? If it were me, I wouldn’t have fucking marked you.”

He’s Gabriel’s now. He can feel it in his blood and bones, a tug pulling him to a place at Gabriel’s feet. He can resist it because he’s always felt it, in a way. There hasn’t been a moment since they began working together that he hasn’t ached to have all of this man that he could get. Theoretically, with practice, Gabriel could use it to compel him. Some vampires are better at that than others. Maybe they’ll see.

It’s the end of Jack Morrison, though. The changes are subtle, but any vampire hunter will spot them. They’ll kill Jack as readily as they will Gabriel. Jack’s lost his partner and his lover, all his ties and resources, and the society of his kind. The job he’s done for the past 20 years, the one he was better than anybody at. Anybody but Gabriel, anyway.

All because Gabriel let revenge consume him. Because he wanted to punish Jack so badly that it overrode even his hunger. 

It’s been one day and everything they ever were has fallen apart. It’s Jack’s turn to shiver. “Do you really hate me that much?”

Gabriel says nothing for a moment. Then he says, “Yes.” He doesn’t turn around.

Jack does. He turns around and walks away. He knows Gabriel too well to entirely believe him, but there’s no room left in him to fight for Gabriel’s forgiveness. He hates them both right now.

He doesn’t say goodbye. After all, they’ll see each other again soon enough. Gabriel has made sure of that.

**Author's Note:**

> Why yes, I do have plans for a sequel. In the meantime, you can find me on Tumblr at [prettyarbitrary](http://prettyarbitrary.tumblr.com).
> 
> Again, vinterhjarta's [rock-awesome](http://vinterhjarta.tumblr.com/post/149080372417/vinterhjarta-so-this-piece-is-for) [art](http://vinterhjarta.tumblr.com/post/149080375477/aaaand-the-follow-up-picture-more-vamp-reaper76).


End file.
